


The Abyss Gazes Also Into You

by fractalserpentine, HopeofDawn



Series: Strangers In A Strange Land [6]
Category: Legacy of Kain
Genre: Bloodplay, Dreams, M/M, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-24
Updated: 2010-10-24
Packaged: 2017-10-12 20:50:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractalserpentine/pseuds/fractalserpentine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeofDawn/pseuds/HopeofDawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A wounded Raziel dreams of the sea, and of lost brethren ....</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Abyss Gazes Also Into You

Time passed.

In the darkness, light blossomed.

The cell was somewhere in the Sanctuary of the Clans, at least a level or two below ground. Small glowing stones, imbedded in the hallway ceiling, began to shimmer. They cast an arctic, pale glow -- so dim that human eyes might only have been able to make out the barest shapes and figures. The bars were thick, cold steel, set into mortar and cracked stone.

The cells were built to hold fledglings or humans, but it was the corpses of the former that lay strewn -- some in the hallway, some in the cells. Protected from the sunlight here, the bodies decayed only slowly into dust. Parchment-dry skin was stretched across bones, every body wrenched into an anamorphic contortion of monstrous agony. Sunken eyesockets and cracked-fanged mouths gaped, open and empty voids through which pinpricks of white drifted, distant and cold as a starfield.

Wet, dark smears glistened, as if a bloody cloak had been dragged along the ground.

Raziel wandered among them, a solitary and drifting figure. His body felt weightless, transparent—when he chanced to look down at his hands, he saw through them faintly, as if looking through leaded glass. And yet he could not leave—one foot was chained, heavy links dragging with a rattling metallic scrape as he walked.

The chain snaked away down the narrow hall, into the darkness and an unknown terminus. Raziel ignored it, moving slowly from corpse to corpse, looking into the empty eyes, searching.

"Lost?" The stones whispered, grating. Crumbling mortar stepped from the wall, forming skin no less rough, steel bars becoming fluid, becoming bone. The voice had a mouth, had thick leonine fangs and a crown of thorns.

"This is no place to tarry," said Kain, idly smoothing back one edge of his cape, bloody red in the dimness.

Raziel, kneeling at the side of a corpse, did not look up. He smoothed talons over dried flesh. Did he know this one ...?

"This place is all that is left," he said, somehow knowing it to be true. The rest of the world had crumbled away.

"So long as you remain here, it will be so," said Kain, expelling a breath laced with dust.

Under Raziel's hand, the desiccated body moved. Or perhaps it was a shifting of the light, making the empty shell of skin seem to ripple. From between those spread and gaping jaws rolled an orb, inky black, studded over with the slowly drifting white pinpricks of stars. The sphere clacked against the stone floor, sounding fragile as spun glass.

Watching it with a distant kind of surprise, Raziel picked it up, holding it delicately imprisoned with the tips of his talons. It was smooth, and cold as the deepest, most secret ice; raising it to his eyes, he gazed on it, and realized the stars did not adorn the surface, but instead floated within ....

"I cannot leave," he said, answering Kain's charge. "I am prisoner here as well." He turned, and looked full upon his sire for the first time. "You made these shackles, Kain."

"You give them gravity," rumbled the voice, deep with age and a certain timeless amusement. "Come Raziel. This way. I have something for you." Kain's massive boots scraped, metal and chitin upon the stone. The hem of his cape did not brush the ground -- 'twas not his that had left the smeared marks. Kain glanced back, momentarily. "Salvation lies in-between," he said, and stepped through the featureless stone wall.

Raziel blinked. He hesitated, then rose, concealing the small sphere in his palm. He went to the wall where Kain had been, and touched the rough, dusty stone. The scrape of his talons seemed loud in the silence, and he murmured, "In between ... what?"

He pushed harder, and the stones gave way, crumbling outward as if they had only been waiting for his touch. Dusty darkness greeted him, and he stepped forward, into it.

A flagstone appeared underfoot. It was ghostly and thin, a single stepping stone in the darkness. Then another hesitantly formed, and then another, and then more, each one a little more swiftly. The corridor was blank, walled with massive stones that had been hewed by the hands of human slaves and then levered into place with inhuman strength.

There was a staircase, lit by a single torch that flickered gradually to life. Kain waited atop in stony patience, arms folded.

Raziel climbed the staircase slowly, one deliberate step at a time. His steps were punctuated by the rattle of the chain that still trailed behind him, endlessly long. The staircase seemed to get longer with every passing moment, and Kain no nearer.

Frustration made him stop, and stare challengingly up at his sire. "What game do you play now, Kain?"

Kain's eyes narrowed fractionally, clearly weighing Raziel and the obstacle both. "Such familiar address, Raziel," he said, an edge of deeply familiar warning in the tone. It had never been difficult to rouse Kain to violent correction. "Retracing these pathways is not easy, but it is worthwhile. Come here."

Raziel growled, low in his throat, but began to climb once again. It took a small eternity before he reached the summit—far longer than it should have, the shackle weighing him down all out of proportion to its size.

Eventually, however, he reached the final stair. Mounting it, he faced Kain as an equal once more.

Kain nodded, just slightly, but the approval was plain. Atop the landing was a wide archway, leading to a far wider hallway, though it was misted over and dim. Kain turned and stepped through, the black miasma eddying around him as he moved.

Everything here had elements of the familiar ... Raziel found himself watching the shadows as he followed Kain, wondering what lurked within them. His own shadow, he noticed, had fled ... or perhaps it cowered within Kain's aura, a lesser darkness among the greater.

Each step brought greater clarity to the surroundings. Upon the walls of the massive fortress walls, tapestries flickered -- first whole, then charred into ruin, then tattered with age, before settling into stable form. The ancient, magnificent architecture of Sanctuary spooled out, emerging as if summoned into reality. Clusters of figures appeared and faded -- groups of slaves scrubbing at the floor, a handful of fledglings that went down upon bended knee, a messenger who bowed briefly and then darted away, his arms full of scroll cases. There was the passage leading to an abattoir, there were Turel's quarters for those times when the clans gathered, and down that hallway lay Raziel's own.

A massive archway, intricately carved and detailed, opened onto a field, covered with sand and slightly sloped. The scene there flickered and changed as well -- gladiators fought with inhuman speed to the distant roar of a crowd for a moment, then the field was empty, then swarmed with humans arranging a lavish outdoor gala. To the right were the gilded doors, many stories tall, that would open onto the throne room.

Beyond was the path leading to the Lake of the Dead.

Raziel stepped out into the sand. Flickering images went unnoticed—armored warriors, standing in ranks, swords raised in salute, frantic slaves scurrying in fear, spilling their blood upon the sands—as his eyes turned away from Kain, and inevitably towards the path that led to his damnation.

Slowly, reluctantly, he took one step, then another—as if he were being dragged forward by an inescapable force. The prints of his feet vanished behind him, the chain slithering invisibly through the sandy grains like a desert serpent.

There was blood upon the sand here, too, and it did not vanish with the shifting, clearing images. The trail was smeared, as if some heavy fabric had been dragged along the ground. Kain stopped in the center of the arena, turning to Raziel. "You will soon require these," said Kain, or perhaps the sound came from the sand or the wind. He held out both hands, palm up, talons a little curved.

In those palms were suddenly bones. Delicately curved, thin and jointed, they dangled from Kain's hands, smeared with purplish-crimson blood and wreathed in hanging tatters of flesh.

Raziel shook his head in mute denial, eyes fixed with horror and grief on those gruesome trophies. Despite the force tugging him forward, he stopped—stepped backwards. Those wings weren't his freedom ... they were his despair.

He lifted his eyes to Kain's face. "Why? Why could you not just tell me?"

The sand underfoot rippled, and around them, the Sanctuary grew increasingly solid, real, connections reforming and stabilizing as surely as they did within the underlying neural network. Kain tilted his head slightly, condsideringly. "I could no more tell you then than I can now," he said evenly. "The paths and streams of time trace out into the infinite; your course within them is by no means assured."

Two forms moved to stand behind Raziel, one to his right, the other to his left. Waiting.

Raziel shook his head, refusing to look. He didn't need to—he knew what awaited him. "You *knew*," he accused. "You *had* to. Why did you betray me?" The last was almost a wail, his voice breaking. He felt the blood trickling down his back, splashing against his calves, staining the ground.

Among all creatures, only the choices of a single unique individual could not be tracked, could not be anticipated. Not even, perhaps, by Kain. "Free will is a slippery thing, Raziel." The voice was a murmur, a caress of sound.

Within Kain's grasp, those slender arcs of bone began to fragment, breaking apart. Dry flecks fell away, as fine as sand. Talons, long and cruel, closed upon Raziel's shoulders.

Raziel did not struggle, or fight. He stood immobile, looking downward, as Dumah and Turel's hard hands fell upon his flesh. "You chose to betray me ... to use me as your pawn," he said quietly. He lifted one hand, uncurling his fingers slowly to reveal the chill ebony orb cradled within.

"Should I choose ... not to love you, then? Not to obey?" Raziel said, watching a white mist pass over the sphere as his words fell upon it.

Perhaps somewhere amongst all those countless branches of possibility, utterly unanticipated pruning was taking place, a vast and unknowable reshuffling that could raze the tree entirely. Or perhaps not. There was no way to know.

Kain watched. "That could be placed in the hands of no other," he said, something like a hint of approval in the words; though whether he referred to Raziel's choice or the orb between Raziel's talons.... A waterfall of sand began to trickle between Kain's claws.

 _No other could make the choice ..._ He straightened suddenly, flinging off Dumah and Turel's hands with a sudden burst of strength, knocking them backwards.

"And if I cannot ...?" He raised the orb to his eyes—then, pushed it into his chest. The searing cold shook him, froze him from the inside out until he was a hollow thing. Around his ankle, the manacle froze—then cracked, shattering into a thousand pieces.

Shaking, light and empty, Raziel lifted blue-taloned hands, offering what they held. "You already have my wings. Take this; I no longer need it." Cradled in his palms was a heart, glassy smooth and black.

"Interesting." Kain stilled, quiet as only the dead could be. A moment passed, and he nodded, solemn and slow, "These will be here... when you need them," he said, letting slip the last of the sand from his claws. Reaching out, he cupped careful talons around the offering, lifting it from Raziel's ice blue -- sky blue -- hands. He stepped back. And then glanced to the figures behind Raziel. Talons clamped upon Raziel's shoulders once more.

He wasn't dragged this time—he walked, head up, between his captors. Almost welcoming the bite of talons upon his flesh; he was cold, clear through, and as empty as a hollow husk. Without restraints, he felt as if he would fly away like a dried leaf in the wind ...

They came to the precipice. The rocks were slick and wet.

Raziel did not look back.

Heavy boots scraping across the stone, Kain followed, to the edge of the thundering abyss. He drew a breath, and spoke the last words _cast him in_ Raziel would hear for thousands of years....

"I am not going to watch this," said Kain crossly, folding his arms.

He sat with his back to Raziel, upon the granite outcropping of a ruined fortress. Thick vines choked the ancient edifice, and the relentless attentions of wind and waves had exposed the foundations in places. A breeze, scented faintly of char, made tangles of his shoulder-length white hair, tossing the strands across fledgling-pale skin.

It was night, just before moonrise, and small scavenging invertebrates scuttled across the sand. Brackish water lapped around Raziel's hooves. Something bumped against his bare, blue-skinned ankle. Thousands upon thousands of tiny black spheres crowded the surface of the lake, floating quietly. They formed a carpet of faintly glimmering pinpoints, more splendid than the starfield above.

" ... Kain?" Had he fallen already? He looked down at the water he stood in, then over at the older? younger? vampire.

"I thought you had refused to watch," Raziel said, and took a cautious step, deeper into the lake. Ebony spheres bumped and rolled in the ripples of his wake.

"Witness myself, not watching," Kain pointed out, sinking down a little where he sat upon the outcropping, until little more than the top of his head was visible, his back pressed against the sloping stone. He drew short black nails through the glittering, dark sand. "What are you looking for out there, anyway?"

Raziel waded deeper, the water warm against his chilly flesh. "Fish. Redemption. Everything, nothing. Who knows?" He sculled his hands through the water, watching the ripples they made. "What does one look for in lakes?"

"Slimy things with tentacles, no doubt. Is that not deep enough, Raziel?" Kain demanded petulantly, tilting his head back against the cool stone to gaze upwards as the sounds of sloshing became a little more distant. He sighed.

Very distantly, something moved in the water, making the multitude of small lights bob and bounce. Where it passed, it left only darkness.

Raziel stilled, watching the depths. "Swimming is like flying, somewhat ... Different—water is more forgiving than air, if harder to navigate. I wonder if Rahab ever knew that?"

"You think he did," Kain sighed. The tips of his talons, dragged through the sand, scraped across something warm and hard and smooth. He unearthed the fist-sized lump and gathered it into his lap, sightlessly brushing the sand from it with his fingertips for a time. Far away and one by one, the tiny lights upon the water continued to blink out, eaten by the inky void. Kain moved restlessly, resettling himself. "Are you clean enough yet? At least return a little closer to shore."

Cupping his hands, Raziel lifted a double handful of water and ebony spheres upward, then let them spill from between his fingers. The black spheres fell, submurging briefly before bobbing to the surface once more, wet and glistening. "Why not join me, instead, Kain?" He looked over to where the other vampire's shadowed form sat.

Kain shuddered faintly -- perhaps at the splashing, perhaps at the invitation. "You have oftimes moved through realms I cannot touch," he said, stroking over the glassy-smooth, warm blackness in his hands. "I think this may be one as well."

The darkness crept outward, winding tendrils swallowing up the reflected light of the lake, and the starry spheres upon it, one by one. Raziel watched as they crept inevitably closer.

"So if I floated away ... then there truly would be no one to follow," he observed.

"Damnation, Raziel," Kain growled. "The middle of a lake is hardly the place for psychoanalytic navel-gazing." He stood and set to brushing himself off, back still to the lake. Unsure what to do with the stone he'd found, Kain finally tucked it under his arm. He'd found it; it was his. That was all there was to it. "I will very well wade out there and haul you back in myself if I must."

"Why?" Raziel's voice was empty, devoid of either anger or passion. "Is this not where you wanted me?"

"If I wanted you there permanently, you would have been gifted flippers," Kain said, with a certain air of long-suffering patience. Sufficiently cleared of sand, Kain stepped out from behind the crumbling outcropping. He wore no armor, neither beneath his skin nor over it. Kain paced slowly along the shore, a bodylength from the lapping edge of water, leaving a trail of bare footprints behind.

Raziel looked back at the darkness, now a mere hands-breadth away—then at Kain's form, glowing moon-pale and beautiful in the dark. He took a step towards Kain.

"No matter what happens, you always remain ..." he said quietly. Eternal ... if not immutable.

Kain laughed softly. "Indivisible, Raziel. Neither absolute nor chronological; existing sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, unevenly. Relative. We are made up of layers, fragments, and some of us..." Kain trailed the tips of his nails across the stone he carried. It was deeply cracked, he realized, split nearly through. "...are even the harbors of constellations. But we are legion, all the same." And at last, steeling himself, he looked to Raziel.

And gasped, dread that would never have crossed an older visage showing clearly on a younger one. Kain stepped to the edge of the water, hand outstretched. "Get out of the lake, Raziel," he hissed.

Raziel stepped forward obediently, wading up out of the water. He reached for Kain's outstretched hand, only to come up short. A shadowy tentacle emerged from the dark water, moving too swiftly to be seen, and wrapped itself around his midsection with bone-crushing strength.

Raziel sank his talons into the steely length, trying to pry it loose, with no success. What minor wounds he managed to inflict healed the instant his claws left the slimy skin. He looked up at Kain, his face wry, and gasped out, "It appears ... I will not find redemption ... in this lake after all."

Kain glanced between the spreading blackness upon the lake and Raziel's thrashing body. "Do not tell me you found fish," he said, bewildered and aggravated both, unable to see the less substantial peril. With a soft growl, he clenched his teeth, and walked into the water.

Flesh sizzled, slowly boiling away in the brackish lake. The constrictor coil around Raziel's chest loosened, just slightly, thick grasping suckers puling free of chill blue skin as the tentacle undulated. Shin-deep, Kain stopped, began to extend his hand once more... and then froze.

Star-struck orbs still bobbed in the shallows. Even through the steam and stink of burning flesh, some of them brushed against Kain. And the ones that did... flooded with green. Contaminating -- and spreading the contagion to the floating spheres nearby. Kain stumbled a half-step back, tendons beginning to disintegrate beneath the surface of the water. The same emerald glow warred in his wide-staring eyes. "Fly, Raziel!"

"Kain, I—" Raziel stumbled as the tentacle loosened—and then an unseen force yanked him under the water. He sank downward, the ground sliding away from his feet as the dark waters closed over his head, seeing the the greenish glow through it. He reached for it, straining.

How could he fly without wings?

A figure struggled downwards through the murky green dimness, limbs thrashing, golden eyes flashing for a bare second before they were consumed by the water, leaving empty black hollows behind. A hand appeared -- black-taloned, the skin and flesh evaporating -- reaching for Raziel.

Straining, Raziel fought with all his strength, no longer passive, hands flailing through the water, kicking at that invisible force that dragged him downward. Kain! he cried out silently, but he couldn't fly in the water, it wasn't air ...

A dark serpentine shape surged beneath them. Cool slick-skinned limbs wrapped around Raziel again—but instead of pulling him down, they bore him upward with a rush. Raziel grabbed at Kain's hand, pulling the desiccated form into his arms—and then they broke free of the water, and into the air, and Raziel turned his head to meet Rahab's amused amethyst gaze.

"Swimming is like flying, after all, Raziel ..." Rahab's voice rumbled, deep and fathomless. Not grossly distorted, like before—Rahab was sleek and beautiful as a river otter, perfectly adapted.

Rahab glistened, all smooth aquamarine skin and silver scale. "Moving in between is a good deal more difficult," he murmured. As if to belie his words, a few powerful sweeps of Rahab's tail took them up, out of the ocean, beyond the creeping green contagion and the oil-slick spread of darkness both. In Raziel's arms, Kain's body disintegrated, black sand spilling into the water. The lake was vast, an ocean beyond the bounds of sight, and everywhere shone starfield-orbs, bobbing upon the water.

"Kain ..." Raziel cried out, trying in vain to hold on to the sand that escaped his talons. "The Elder God ... Rahab, we must go back!" He twisted against Rahab's grip as they swam into the sky, oddly strengthless against his brother.

Rahab snorted softly, moist breath over Raziel's shoulder. "Kain will be along eventually. Is he not always?" A dimmer patch ahead resolved itself into an island, rocky and bare. Upon its shores were beached dozens of small silver fish. Some flipped and gasped, some inched their way into the shallows, where they streaked away under the black water, like comets, only to be replaced with others that thrashed their individual ways from the water to the rocks. As elegantly swift as a reef shark, Rahab brought Raziel to where his feet could find purchase on the sandy beach.

Touching downward, Raziel kept hold of Rahab's arms. "Rahab ... what is going on?" he asked, as if Rahab were the elder and not he. "I don't ... I can't hold on to anything. It all slips away ..."

Rahab hung in the air above the water, just at the edge of the shore. The tip of his tail flicked the surface of the ocean, stirring it into ripples and eddies. His webbed fingers were cool and slick, returning Raziel's grip for a time. "The fish cannot always stay here, Raziel. This is not their domain."

"Nor yours," Raziel said quietly, resigned. His fingers tightened as he looked over the bare rock and sand, surrounded by dark water. "I fear it might be mine ..." Alone on a barren isle, nameless and forgotten. It was a unique kind of a purgatory ...

 

"It is quite safe here -- a good place for your wings to begin to repair," Rahab pointed out, purple-tinged fins stirring in the air. A few more fish, as beautiful and bright as stars, flipped and struggled their ways back into the water. "You could always go after them --fluctuating betwixt and between, though..." Rahab glanced over his shoulder. "The ocean can be a lonely place."

"Rahab ..." Raziel's arrogance dissolved completely. Plaintively he asked, "Stay?"

To see his brother, beautiful and whole, should have been gift enough, he knew. But he wanted more ... even at the cost of Rahab's freedom.

"Keep your friends close, Raziel, and your fish even closer?" Rahab said, eyes crinkling at the edges, near laughter. He stroked a thumb talon over the skin of Raziel's forearm, more thoughtfully. "I am ever with you, but -- by your will, brother, I will stay as long as I am able," he said. Tail curving over the sand, Rahab sank down, as if going to his knees. Glancing up coyly, challengingly, through his lashes, Rahab tilted his head slightly, exposing the silver-blue skin of his throat.

Feeling as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders—even if it were only temporary—Raziel stroked his hands over that smooth and silvery skin, tangling his talons in the damp silk of Rahab's hair, discovering the dark blue-black dorsal frills that lay at the nape of his neck. "Such ingratitude toward Kain's gifts, Rahab," he mock-chided. "You are far more than a fish." He sobered, a talon caressing the side of that upturned face. "You are ... beautiful. One of the gods that we dreamed of becoming ..." Instead of the monsters they had turned into.

"We were always gods, Raziel," Rahab murmured, lifting his face into the caress. Under Raziel's cold, blue talons, the cobalt fins stirred, spreading. Membrane stretched between elegantly curved, near-black spines. "But this is a gift from you, and no other. We exist whole and perfect, and part of your soul." His webbed hands stroked daringly over Raziel's flanks. "Indivisible."

"Indivisible, perhaps ... but at what cost?" Raziel murmured. "Your individual destiny reft from you, subsumed into mine ... how could that be worth it?" He traced the arch of one of the fins delicately, seeking the sensitive skin beneath, cool and slick, even as he arched a little into Rahab's touch, his flesh beginning to stir.

"How could you doubt that it is?" asked Rahab, startled, glancing up. His eyes narrowed slightly, and his lips spread in a sudden shark's smile. Long, muscular tail thrashing against the damp sand, Rahab lunged hard. His weight flung them both sliding into the sand on their sides. Supple tail wrapping one of Raziel's legs, Rahab fought to pin Raziel onto his back.

"Agck! Rahab!" Raziel gasped, spitting sand. Mock-growling, he scrabbled against the sandy soil with his free leg, bucking upwards, trying to free his fouled wings and winding one arm around his brother's neck in an attempt at a headlock. Which, for vampires, was more a nuisance than a threat, really, but still ... it was the thought that counted, right?

Rahab's body was longer and heavier, and the scales that covered him from the waist down were smooth to the point of slipperiness -- but Raziel, as it had always been, was by far the stronger and swifter. They tumbled over a few times, sand sheeting as they kicked it up, water splashing as limbs or tail flailed into the rippling surface. But Raziel's headlock held firm. Rumbling a deep, purring growl, Rahab wriggled and experimentally tried for a bite at the arm wrapped around his throat.

Growling in return, Raziel straddled Rahab's heaving body with his legs, feet digging deep into the sand, and bit at the back of his neck, nuzzling between flared cobalt fins and water-heavy hair. The skin was smooth and slicker than Raziel remembered it, but under it all Rahab tasted of salt, of the sea and family.

"Rahab ... " he murmured, suddenly wondering how it had been for his brother, that first step into the water. A leap of faith, it must have been, to trust oneself to a world so inimical to their kind ...

"Mmm..." at the sharp clench of teeth at the back of his neck, Rahab's thrashing stilled and he disengaged his own jaws from Raziel's arm. His incisors were still flat, like unto any other vampire's, but his fangs were more slender, and curved back. His molars were jagged and triangular, all cutting edges. Coyly, a little insolently, he swept his tongue along Raziel's arm and the swiftly-vanishing marks he'd left. "And what, prithee tell, do you intend to do with your catch?" asked Rahab, clearly trying to keep his face serious, though there was a toothy grin in his voice.

"Hard to say," Raziel murmured against his flesh, ragged wings flared around them both. "Perhaps you shall have to remind me—what does one do when one is done ... fishing?" His free hand slid down Rahab's bared chest, patched with sand and moisture, exploring.

"I think... ah!" Rahab's long body arched a little, tail curving upwards, coincidentally pressing the soft, folded fins along his back into Raziel's groin. His webbed hands splayed out on the sand, palm down, as Raziel's claws ran across his chest, finding a pebbled nipple, then the small, soft scales that began above his navel, then lower to larger, slicker scales. "It seems to me that, properly, a catch must needs be prepared..." the last word ended in a gasp as Raziel passed his talons farther down, to the place between his pelvic fins.

"Ah yes ... what do they call it? Being gutted and cleaned?" Raziel gave a dark, unseen smile. "Yet I think you would lose a great deal of your allure if I beheaded you and ripped out your entrails, brother ... Perhaps I can think of ... alternate methods." His hand drifted lower, his calloused palm smoothing over that dark flesh. He felt the ridges of Rahab's fins, the interlocking scales—but none of the softer organs he had expected to find.

"Rahab ...?" he said, unable to keep his dismay from his voice. Had Rahab's evolution ... unmanned him?

Turned a little to the side, Rahab pushed that place -- a bit lower than where the groin would be, were he human -- insistently against Raziel's palm, before the confusion in his elder's tone registered. Rahab blinked. Twisting his body in the sand, Rahab turned, though he kept his chin upraised, exposing faintly ridged gill-slits and the softness of his throat. "What...?" he started, then the corners of his lips quirked up. "Feeling... inadequate, brother?" he murmured, and wrapped one webbed hand around Raziel's wrist, guiding his elder's palm as his fins, unhampered by the sand, spread a little more. Concealed by the each of the pair of fins lay a harder, more cartilaginous spear of flesh. Each might be mistakable for a small, narrow flipper itself, save that touching either one made Rahab shudder and writhe.

Raziel touched them, tentatively at first, with the blunt side of his palm and fingers, rather than with his talons. They were—strange, thinner, but harder than a man's cock, and slightly longer. But they rose up underneath his caresses just as more familiar flesh did, no longer hidden beneath Rahab's fins.

"Two ...?" he murmured, fascinated by the changes. What was the purpose in having two ...? Rahab was still smirking at him, and Raziel leaned down to cover it with a hard kiss, heedless of their fangs. "You always strive to outdo the rest of us, Rahab, do you not?"

"Never was a particularly... worthwhile pursuit...!" Rahab laughed into Raziel's mouth, their fangs clashing, small wounds to lips and tongue opening and then closing almost instantly. "You taste... of the open skies... and freedom," he murmured, gasping and pressing up into Raziel's groin every time the rough undersides of Raziel's talons rubbed against him. Rahab was no longer quite so sensitive -- nor so easy to damage -- there, and Raziel's firm touch was exquisitely pleasurable. One webbed hand tangled in Raziel's hair, the other reached for the base of his wings.

"Broth—nnh!" Those clawed fingers knew him too well, curving under the bony plates that protected the join of his wings to spine, to the achingly sensitive flesh that hid beneath them. Raziel gasped and bucked upwards, tattered blue wings flexing instinctively, and his own caresses became harder, more urgent.

Growling low in his throat, Raziel tilted his head, sinking fangs delicately into that exposed throat. The wounds he made were superficial, healing visibly after every bite, and he lapped at the blood that welled up, rich and potent. Blood of his blood, blood of Kain's making ... he savored every drop.

Rahab cried out, writhing, even as his clever fingers -- a little softer and more slender than Raziel's own talons -- scraped and teased across the base of Raziel's wings, drawing velvet-soft webbing and delicately hooked claws over the most sensitive places. He pressed that razor-fanged mouth into his throat, groaning, until he could take no more. "Raziel! Wait -- here," he gasped, nearly incoherent. He slid his talons from Raziel's hair to reach for his wrist once more, trying to draw Raziel's talons from his claspers to the small, slit-like indentation between.

They had changed so much—and yet the essentials remained the same. For a moment, Raziel resisted Rahab's attempts to move his hand. But his own cock was heavy, achingly hard as it rubbed against the slick scales of waist and tail, urging him further.

Lifting his head, Raziel watched Rahab's face as he touched that slit, rubbing the blunt edge of one talon against the soft flesh before slowly, carefully easing it inside, stretching it open.

Rahab cried out, a deep and rumbling call, throwing his head back as the slit parted for the tip of Raziel's talon. The edges of the gills along his neck flared and flushed, aquamarine upon silvered-blue, as he gasped for breath he did not need. But unlike in humans, this opening was made for a singular purpose; and sharp though Raziel's talons were, there was little pain. Rahab pushed upwards, trying to take the broad finger deeper.

Raziel could not prevent himself from leaning downward, sucking and nibbling at the bared neck. Rahab was beautiful and proud, even in his submission, and to see him thus was an undeniable temptation.

Laving a tongue over dark-fleshed nipples, Raziel slid his broad-taloned finger deeper into Rahab's slick opening, twisting it with aching slowness until his knuckle rubbed against the outside of that slit. Tight as it was, it did not resist his entrance—and Raziel groaned low in his throat at the thought of how it would feel around his cock.

One web-fingered hand grasped at the back of Raziel's neck, and than clawed through the sand, seeming to search for purchase. The other kept up the teasing, delicate scraping and rubbing at the base of Raziel's wings, though the motions became increasingly staccato, trembling as Rahab trembled. "Raziel! Nnngh..." Rahab's jaws gaped, his fangs snapped at the air with a shearing sound as he seemed to struggle. The thicker knuckle of Raziel's talon began to spread the tight opening, began to slip inside. "Raziel, please!"

"Immortal ....uhn! ...yet so ... impatient," Raziel gasped, his mouth against Rahab's heaving belly. His own control was rapidly being strained to the limit, and as delicious as Rahab's flesh felt around his hand, he wanted to possess it even more intimately. Rearing upwards, Raziel shifted until he was straddling the thick bulk of Rahab's tail, his cock nudging at that inviting slit. Rahab's fingers dug into his wings—and that was all the urging he needed to sink himself inward, his cockhead pushing easily into Rahab's entrance and deep into that tight, slick body.

Rahab roared as he was taken. Roared, and surged up, supple tail lashing, fins brushing Raziel's mantled, tattered wings. The channel was fist-tight around Raziel's thick cock, inhumanly so -- internal muscles rippled around the impalement, squeezing in primal rhythm. Rahab's scrabbling talons found purchase at Raziel's hip, the three aquamarine fingers spreading, webbing stretching over skin as blue as the bowl of a rarefied sky. Short, curved talons sank in, drawing lines of purple-black blood. Gasped words fell from between snapping jaws -- "Raziel!" and "Always so beautiful...."

He had almost forgotten what it was like, to be with one of his own—not a human, nor a fledgling, but one of his brothers, almost as strong as himself ... Raziel gave a hoarse shout as he thrust inward, feeling Rahab's body squeeze him like a vise. Tattered wings beat at the air, talons catching at cobalt skin as Raziel sank deep, deep, until he could go no further and his aching balls were rubbing hard against the smooth scales.

"Ra—hab!" he gasped, eyes squeezed shut as he shuddered and tried to thrust even deeper. Sand flew as they writhed together, biting and clawing.

So different from taking any other creature -- there was no tight ring of muscle to impede Raziel's hitching thrusts, only the slickness of that channel, increasingly tight, helpless against Raziel's strength. Not so Rahab himself. He writhed, bucking up to meet the impalement, gasping with the pain and the bliss of accepting that so-familiar body into his own. As Raziel's fangs found his flesh, so too he bit at Raziel's bicep, shoulder, whatever he could reach. Droplets of blood spattered over both of them.

The salt in their blood and the salt in the sea—for a breathless moment Raziel wondered if they were one and the same. Then Rahab clenched around him even tighter, fangs biting down deeper at the ridge of one collarbone, and Raziel stopped thinking. Withdrawing, he thrust heavily inward, his knees pressing hard against where Rahab's tail met torso, feeling that hot flesh clasp his aching cock again and again.

Held steady by Raziel's superior strength, the base of his tail trapped between his elder's powerful thighs, Rahab writhed as he was ridden. Each thrust rubbed Raziel's hips against Rahab's claspers, even as that thick cock filled him so painfully, so deeply. Each withdrawal made him keen with loss, his body pinned too tightly to struggle upwards. Rahab could only flex his fingers under the bony plates at the base of Raziel's wings, urging Kain's firstborn in again, deeper into the clench of that narrow slit. Sand and droplets of water showered off Raziel's wings as Rahab's long-finned tail, unconstrained, lashed against the margin of the sea.

Raziel shifted, driving upwards, rubbing the length of his body against Rahab's smooth-scaled flesh with each pounding stroke. "Ra ... hab," he breathed into that pointed ear, nuzzling at the fragile fins behind it as they flexed and shuddered underneath the strands of ebony hair. Thrusting again, he ground himself deep, as if trying to possess every inch of that body from the inside out. "Come for me, brother ..." he gasped, biting down at the cords of Rahab's neck. "Come ... with me ..."

The shift and escalation of pleasure as Raziel changed his angle left Rahab all but paralyzed, shuddering, just trying to hold on a few moments more even as each thrust ratcheted him higher, tighter, the sensation uncontainable. Those nudging touches against the sensitive fins made Rahab gasp finally, breathlessly, the air having been driven from him by each powerful surge into his body. "Raziel!" And now Rahab did buck upwards, fins slapping upon the wet sand, one hand at the base of Raziel's wings, the other clawing at his elder's hip, back, just trying to push him deeper, as if Raziel were not already thrust to the hilt. Quaking, Rahab came, claspers spilling wetness against Raziel's hips, channel rippling, clenching around the thick impalement.

Raziel cried out as Rahab's body clenched around him, so tight it was almost to the point of pain. Every inch of his cock was being squeezed by slick, silken heat, compressed by the ferocity of Rahab's pleasure, until all Raziel could do was feel. His balls were aching and tight, skin slick with Rahab's seed.

"Yes ... Rahab!" Raziel panted, first arching against the claws at his back, heedless of the wounds they left, then thrusting downward again, torn between the pleasure of Rahab's hands and the demands of his flesh. Rahab's tail flexed between his legs, steely muscles rubbing hard against his balls. With a gutteral roar, Raziel came, his body locking into place as he arched and thrust deep, wings snapping skyward as he came, filling his brother's body with his seed.

Rahab hung suspended in the moment for the infinite space of a heartbeat, blind with the pleasure, swept under with the release and fulfillment as perfect as the dark places of the ocean, fathoms below the surface. Shuddering, slowly, he relaxed beneath Raziel, eyes drifting nearly shut. After a time, he gradually worked his short, curved claws from his elder's flesh, webbed hands spreading more carefully over Raziel's skin, still holding him tight. "You can..." Rahab tried to speak, had to remember to draw a shallow breath. Even still, his lips and tongue only haltingly formed words, as if language itself had been forgotten. "...gut me like that... any time... 'ziel."

Raziel was half-collapsed over Rahab's prone form, his wings slowly relaxing and folding downward. Still held tight within his brother's body, random shudders vibrating through his flesh with the aftershocks of his climax, their bodies slickly intertwined. At Rahab's words, Raziel gave a small huff of almost-laughter, his forehead resting upon the other's breast.

"Better to call it ...being speared," he murmured against that silver-blue skin, newly complacent in his satiation.

Rahab's dorsal fins were folded flat between his back and the sand, and Raziel's weight was not in the least part uncomfortable. Slowly, languidly, Rahab wrapped his arms around the small of Raziel's back. He might not be able to prevent his brother from moving, but that did not mean he could not broadcast quite clearly what he wanted. The corners of Rahab's mouth turned up. "How could I... resist the allure of such a fine... rod?"'

Raziel snickered, and relaxed into Rahab's grip. He shifted a little, wiggling experimentally where they were still joined, and crossed his arms upon Rahab's chest, resting his chin upon them. He blew upward at a stray ebony strand of hair that had straggled over his face. "How indeed?" Raziel agreed smugly.

Rahab cracked one eyelid open lazily. The thickness still within him was deeply satisfying, an exquisite ache of well-abused muscles. Raziel's movement shifted the length of his cock, and Rahab tensed a little, a languid ripple of muscle around the softening organ. "Narcissist," he murmured, smoothing one webbed hand over Raziel's hair.

"Perhaps," Raziel agreed easily, his smile widening. "Would you prefer I sing your praises instead? 'Oh Rahab, mightiest of all mountains! Rahab, with skin the perfect blue of a well-strangled human ...'" He trailed off, still smirking.

Rahab pretended to think. "Needs more lines, methinks, but... not bad," he said, which wasn't exactly the case. Translated into the noble tongue of their high race, Raziel's little couplet was, as usual, perfect in meter and rhyme, and this one made oblique and clever reference to one of the sole literary accomplishments of Dumah's brood. Rahab rolled his eyes and muttered to himself, as if Raziel could not see and hear him perfectly well. "And they called _me_ maladjusted."

Raziel chortled. "My apologies, brother. Perhaps a sea chanty would suit you instead?" Not that he knew any--a seaman he was not! But he could invent a few, if pressed, he supposed. He hid his amused countenance behind a curtain of his own hair as he pressed lips to Rahab's chest, tongue flicking out to swipe at a stray droplet of drying blood.

"No doubt," Rahab murmured, thrumming lowly with laughter. "Mayhaps when next we meet, you will join me at sea...." His hands stroked down Raziel's neck, his upper back, sharp black nails catching against Raziel's armored blue skin, leaving near-invisible nicks that vanished all but instantly. Rahab's own skin was beginning to dry, salt leaving a film of white on the surface.

Arching subtly into the slow caresses, Raziel sighed. Watching the silver fish struggle their way to and from the rocky shore, he thought that perhaps it would not be such a bad thing to stay here after all; to remain just like this until his flesh was dust and only his bones remained, bleached white by an inescapable sun. It sounded ... peaceful.

"Tell me of the sea, Rahab," he said, half-command, half-plea, closing his eyes.

Rahab's webbed hand returned to Raziel's hair. "Humankind -- and most vampires -- may see the times of dreamy quietude, may behold the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin. They forget the tiger heart that pants beneath it. Few care to recall that the velvet paw conceals remorseless talons." He stroked for a moment, thoughtfully, voice a low and rumbling hum. "The sea is a cold, dark, endless immensity, dangerous and beautiful both beyond words. Its touch is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace. Its voice speaks to the soul...."

Rahab whispered these things as his skin dried and cracked, as the night sky lightened, his voice ever a low and hypnotic rumble, as insistent as the wash of waves against the sand. As it faded, the dream spun away images, impressions, brief fragments of memory. One image: Raziel lay alone in the sand, accompanied only by the grooves and hollows where Rahab had drawn his long body back into the star-strewn ocean. Another: a single broken half of a fist-sized black stone, washed onto the shore in a swirl of noxious green slime.

The last was an impression only -- neither sight nor sound, only the feeling of being cradled against roughly armored skin in a massively strong, infinitely careful embrace.


End file.
